Suppression

3 - Late Again

"Stop, stop, stop!" Teagan exclaimed as the London taxi turned the corner and the distinctive, white Art Deco form of Victoria Coach Station swung into view.

The taxi driver grunted and swerved suddenly into the nearest lay-by, in this case, a bus stop. Teagan thrust a fistful of five-pound notes towards him, around the clear perspex shield and tried the door handle. It refused to move. The driver looked disdainfully at the offered money, mentally counted it and then hit the button to unlock the passenger doors as he pulled the notes from her grip.

"Thank you!" she shouted cheerfully as she clumsily kicked open the door and slid out onto the pavement dragging her rucksack and small holdall with her. Hastily pulling her bulging bags onto her shoulders, she pushed the taxi door shut with her hip and then set off at a fast walking pace between the many people passing on the wide footpath.

Barely a minute later, she was passing through the motorised double doors, stepping around an elderly couple and power-walking on into the darkness of the station. She already had her tickets so it would just be a matter of locating the right coach before its scheduled departure time in less than three minutes.

The noise of people, announcements, diesel engines and brakes did nothing to help the dull throb of her headache. At least it should be quieter on the coach, assuming she could find it quickly enough. She pushed on through the bustling crowd until she could see the enormous and complicated departures board. As her eyes scanned the orange-on-black dot-matrix display, searching for the route number of her coach, the slight dizziness that had been recurring intermittently for a few days washed back over her.

Doing her best to ignore it, she found her bus, the 509, and read its gate number, Gate 2. It was already signalled as boarding so she tightened her grip on her holdall and set off along the gates hall. She had to dodge around a group of obvious tourists heading the opposite way, dragging oversized, wheelie suitcases and then she joined the very short queue heading out through the glass doors onto the polished concrete floor where the coaches parked.

Running across in front of an approaching coach, she reached the front door of her coach, pleased to find it had been delayed a little, while the attendant helped an elderly lady climb the steep steps up to the central aisle. Teagan held her cardboard ticket ready and pretended to wait patiently for the coach attendant to finish and take it.

Rather than wait to see her rucksack man-handled into the voluminous cargo space under the coach, she bounced up the steep steps and into the comparative quiet of the coach's interior. The smell of carpet, sweat and air-freshener assaulted her nose as she pushed her way between the two columns of seats and found a suitable seat on the kerb side of the coach.

She dropped into the window seat and positioned her holdall on the seat beside it, in the hope that it would discourage anyone from sitting there. It turned out to be an unnecessary precaution as the coach was less than two-thirds full when the door slid into place and clamped itself tightly against the heavy, rubber seal. The whole vehicle shuddered as its diesel engine throbbed into life and immediately pulled away.